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Obscure Country Profile #6: Jersey

By Shawn Bryant

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Sandwiched between the English Channel and The Golfe de Saint Malo exists an isle so vile that it eats dandelions and shits lead. It has become an out for every tax cheat, grifter and rumrunner east of the Pond. Its name is Jersey and, like its newer American counterpart, it provides a haven for the unscrupulous. If the Garden State is the armpit of America, Jersey is Europe’s grundel.

Jersey is now known as the offshore banking capital of Europe. In other words, the island exists solely to shelter those who use public services, infrastructure and a publicly educated workforce, but do not wish to ante up. There are nearly 100,000 companies registered in Jersey. This certainly would - at least in capitalist terms - be viewed as a positive development until one realizes there are only 88,000 people on the island itself. Are three-year-olds creating whole industries?

The answer, of course, is no. Three-year-olds do not have the neurological development to wipe their ass, let alone balance a ledger. Jersey is, in a word, foul. Just last week, the London Financial Times ran a story suggesting Jersey had "found a loophole in the European Savings Tax Directive that will allow investors to bypass the exchange of information and withholding tax requirements through the use of discretionary trusts." One begins to shiver knowing that these "discretionary trusts" are in the hands of dangerous men.

Jersey’s history is that of militaristic endeavor. While portrayed in bourgeois European circles as a peaceful backwater of the English Channel, Jersey’s true origins are of conquest and domination. Its barbaric past began with Jerseyites climbing through caves and hunting mammoths, while civilized society flourished in Africa and Asia. As a Roman military outpost, and with the aid of its uncouth denizens, the island was used as a staging point for the invasion of Great Britain. As the island passed from Roman to Viking to English to French hands, its people developed a knack for adopting the worst traits of its conquerors. And today, the average Jerseyite is a blond-haired, blue-eyed pygmy reeking of garlic, and donning terrible dental work.

The economy of Jersey is based on two sectors - the already alluded to decrepit banking system and the altogether despicable practice of Bovine Eugenics. Apparently, the demented minds of this hapless island believe that they can, through bizarre breeding practices, develop the perfect cow. Such a cow would produce chocolate milk and fly Jersey’s upper echelon's military aircraft. And while this practice has brought a formal protest from the Indian Consulate, the policy of breeding the "Jersey Cow" continues unabated. The world's largest democracy, India, not only to decries the Bovine breeding but the undemocratic ways of the Jersey government as well.

Jersey is currently a rigid monarchal/military style government run by the tyrannical Queen of England, Elizabeth II, and her military henchman, Commander in Chief Air Chief Marshall Sir John Cheshire. Together, they make up a dyad of danger not only for Europe, but for the entire civilized world.

So, as the Bush administration launches preemptive strikes on "tyrannical, non-democratic nations" and continues to discourage genetic testing within the United States, such things are occurring right under the nose of our most vaunted ally, the United Kingdom. While there is no doubt that a nation with unlimited chocolate milk and airborne cows’ sounds both delicious and inspirational, the result has decimated the moral high ground on which American foreign policy stood tall only two short years ago. Is "simply free checking" and free lollipops an excuse to prop up the repressive Cheshire regime? This question must be answered in an untimely and incomprehensive way within the bowels of the State Department if the people of Jersey are to be liberated.

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Shawn Bryant is a freelance writer from Boston.  He can be contacted at [email protected].

© 2003 Me Three